ITALIAN PAINTING.
THE DECADENCE AND MODERN WORK. 1600-1894.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, also General Bibliography,
(page xv.); Calvi, _Notizie della vita e delle opere di Gio.
Francesco Barbiera_; Malvasia, _Felsina Pittrice_; Sir
Joshua Reynolds, _Discourses_; Symonds, _Renaissance in
Italy--The Catholic Reaction_; Willard, _Modern Italian
Art_.
THE DECLINE: An art movement in history seems like a wave that rises
to a height, then breaks, falls, and parts of it are caught up from
beneath to help form the strength of a new advance. In Italy
Christianity was the propelling force of the wave. In the Early
Renaissance, the antique, and the study of nature came in as
additions. At Venice in the High Renaissance the art-for-art's-sake
motive made the crest of light and color. The highest point was
reached then, and there was nothing that could follow but the breaking
and the scattering of the wave. This took place in Central Italy after
1540, in Venice after 1590.
Art had typified in form, thought, and expression everything of which
the Italian race was capable. It had perfected all the graces and
elegancies of line and color, and adorned them with a superlative
splendor. There was nothing more to do. The idea was completed, the
motive power had served its purpose, and that store of race-impulse
which seems necessary to the making of every great art was exhausted.
For the men that came after Michael Angelo and Tintoretto there was
nothing. All that they could do was to repeat what others had said, or
to recombine the old thoughts and forms. This led inevitably to
imitation, over-refinement of style, and conscious study of beauty,
resulting in mannerism and affectation. Such qualities marked the art
of those painters who came in the latter part of the sixteenth century
and the first of the seventeenth. They were unfortunate men in the
time of their birth. No painter could have been great in the
seventeenth century of Italy. Art lay prone upon its face under Jesuit
rule, and the late men were left upon the barren sands by the receding
wave of the Renaissance.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--BRONZINO. CHRIST IN LIMBO. UFFIZI.]
ART MOTIVES AND SUBJECTS: As before, the chief subject of the art of
the Decadence was religion, with many heads and busts of the Madonna,
though nature and the classic still played their parts. After the
Reformation at the North the Church in Italy started the
Counter-Reformation. One of the chief means employed by this Catholic
reaction was the embellishment of church worship, and painting on a
large scale, on panel rather than in fresco, was demanded for
decorative purposes. But the religious motive had passed out, though
its subject was retained, and the pictorial motive had reached its
climax at Venice. The faith of the one and the taste and skill of the
other were not attainable by the late men, and, while consciously
striving to achieve them, they fell into exaggerated sentiment and
technical weakness. It seems perfectly apparent in their works that
they had nothing of their own to say, and that they were trying to say
over again what Michael Angelo, Correggio, and Titian had said before
them much better. There were earnest men and good painters among them,
but they could produce only the empty form of art. The spirit had
fled.
THE MANNERISTS: Immediately after the High Renaissance leaders of
Florence and Rome came the imitators and exaggerators of their styles.
They produced large, crowded compositions, with a hasty facility of
the brush and striking effects of light. Seeking the grand they
overshot the temperate. Their elegance was affected, their sentiment
forced, their brilliancy superficial glitter. When they thought to be
ideal they lost themselves in incomprehensible allegories; when they
thought to be real they grew prosaic in detail. These men are known in
art history as the Mannerists, and the men whose works they imitated
were chiefly Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Correggio. There were many
of them, and some of them have already been spoken of as the followers
of Michael Angelo.
Agnolo Bronzino (1502?-1572) was a pupil of Pontormo, and an imitator
of Michael Angelo, painting in rather heavy colors with a thin brush.
His characters were large, but never quite free from weakness, except
in portraiture, where he appeared at his best. Vasari (1511-1574)--the
same Vasari who wrote the lives of the painters--had versatility and
facility, but his superficial imitations of Michael Angelo were too
grandiose in conception and too palpably false in modelling. Salviati
(1510-1563) was a friend of Vasari, a painter of about the same cast
of mind and hand as Vasari, and Federigo Zucchero (1543-1609) belongs
with him in producing things muscularly big but intellectually small.
Baroccio (1528-1612), though classed among the Mannerists as an
imitator of Correggio and Raphael, was really one of the strong men of
the late times. There was affectation and sentimentality about his
work, a prettiness of face, rosy flesh tints, and a general lightness
of color, but he was a superior brushman, a good colorist, and, at
times, a man of earnestness and power.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.--BAROCCIO. ANNUNCIATION.]
THE ECLECTICS: After the Mannerists came the Eclectics of Bologna, led
by the Caracci, who, about 1585, sought to "revive" art. They started
out to correct the faults of the Mannerists, and yet their own art was
based more on the art of their great predecessors than on nature. They
thought to make a union of Renaissance excellences by combining
Michael Angelo's line, Titian's color, Correggio's light-and-shade and
Raphael's symmetry and grace. The attempt was praiseworthy for the
time, but hardly successful. They caught the lines and lights and
colors of the great men, but they overlooked the fact that the
excellence of the imitated lay largely in their inimitable
individualities, which could not be combined. The Eclectic work was
done with intelligence, but their system was against them and their
baroque age was against them. Midway in their career the Caracci
themselves modified their eclecticism and placed more reliance upon
nature. But their pupils paid little heed to the modification.
There were five of the Caracci, but three of them--Ludovico
(1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602), and Annibale (1560-1609)--led the
school, and of these Annibale was the most distinguished. They had
many pupils, and their influence was widely spread over Italy. In Sir
Joshua Reynolds's day they were ranked with Raphael, but at the
present time criticism places them where they belong--painters of the
Decadence with little originality or spontaneity in their art, though
much technical skill. Domenichino (1581-1641) was the strongest of the
pupils. His St. Jerome was rated by Poussin as one of the three great
paintings of the world, but it never deserved such rank. It is
powerfully composed, but poor in coloring and handling. The painter
had great repute in his time, and was one of the best of the
seventeenth century men. Guido Reni (1575-1642) was a painter of many
gifts and accomplishments, combined with many weaknesses. His works
are well composed and painted, but excessive in sentiment and overdone
in pathos. Albani (1578-1660) ran to elegance and a porcelain-like
prettiness. Guercino (1591-1666) was originally of the Eclectic School
at Bologna, but later took up with the methods of the Naturalists at
Naples. He was a painter of far more than the average ability.
Sassoferrato (1605-1685) and Carlo Dolci (1616-1686) were so
super-saturated with sentimentality that often their skill as painters
is overlooked or forgotten. In spirit they were about the weakest of
the century. There were other eclectic schools started throughout
Italy--at Milan, Cremona, Ferrara--but they produced little worth
recording. At Rome certain painters like Cristofano Allori
(1577-1621), an exceptionally strong man for the time, Berrettini
(1596-1669), and Maratta (1625-1713), manufactured a facile kind of
painting from what was attractive in the various schools, but it was
never other than meretricious work.
[Illustration: FIG. 54.--ANNIBALE CARACCI. ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST.
LOUVRE.]
THE NATURALISTS: Contemporary with the Eclectics sprang up the
Neapolitan school of the Naturalists, led by Caravaggio (1569-1609)
and his pupils. These schools opposed each other, and yet influenced
each other. Especially was this true with the later men, who took what
was best in both schools. The Naturalists were, perhaps, more firmly
based upon nature than the Bolognese Eclectics. Their aim was to take
nature as they found it, and yet, in conformity with the extravagance
of the age, they depicted extravagant nature. Caravaggio thought to
represent sacred scenes more truthfully by taking his models from the
harsh street life about him and giving types of saints and apostles
from Neapolitan brawlers and bandits. It was a brutal, coarse
representation, rather fierce in mood and impetuous in action, yet not
without a good deal of tragic power. His subjects were rather dismal
or morose, but there was knowledge in the drawing of them, some good
color and brush-work and a peculiar darkness of shadow masses
(originally gained from Giorgione), that stood as an ear-mark of his
whole school. From the continuous use of black shadows the school got
the name of the "Darklings," by which they are still known. Giordano
(1632-1705), a painter of prodigious facility and invention, Salvator
Rosa (1615-1673), best known as one of the early painters of
landscape, and Ribera, a Spanish painter, were the principal pupils.
THE LATE VENETIANS: The Decadence at Venice, like the Renaissance,
came later than at Florence, but after the death of Tintoretto
mannerisms and the imitation of the great men did away with
originality. There was still much color left, and fine ceiling
decorations were done, but the nobility and calm splendor of Titian's
days had passed. Palma il Giovine (1544-1628) with a hasty brush
produced imitations of Tintoretto with some grace and force, and in
remarkable quantity. He and Tintoretto were the most rapid and
productive painters of the century; but Palma's was not good in
spirit, though quite dashing in technic. Padovanino (1590-1650) was
more of a Titian follower, but, like all the other painters of the
time, he was proficient with the brush and lacking in the stronger
mental elements. The last great Italian painter was Tiepolo
(1696-1770), and he was really great beyond his age. With an art
founded on Paolo Veronese, he produced decorative ceilings and panels
of high quality, with wonderful invention, a limpid brush, and a light
flaky color peculiarly appropriate to the walls of churches and
palaces. He was, especially in easel pictures, a brilliant, vivacious
brushman, full of dash and spirit, tempered by a large knowledge of
what was true and pictorial. Some of his best pictures are still in
Venice, and modern painters are unstinted in their praise of them. He
left a son, Domenico Tiepolo (1726-1795), who followed his methods. In
the late days of Venetian painting, Canaletto (1697-1768) and Guardi
(1712-1793) achieved reputation by painting Venetian canals and
architecture with much color effect.
[Illustration: FIG. 55.--CARAVAGGIO. THE CARD PLAYERS. DRESDEN.]
NINETEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING IN ITALY: There is little in the art of
Italy during the present century that shows a positive national
spirit. It has been leaning on the rest of Europe for many years, and
the best that the living painters show is largely an echo of
Dusseldorf, Munich, or Paris. The revived classicism of David in
France affected nineteenth-century painting in Italy somewhat. Then it
was swayed by Cornelius and Overbeck from Germany. Morelli (1826-[2])
shows this latter influence, though one of the most important of the
living men.[3] In the 1860's Mariano Fortuny, a Spaniard at Rome, led
the younger element in the glittering and the sparkling, and this
style mingled with much that is more strikingly Parisian than Italian,
may be found in the works of painters like Michetti, De Nittis
(1846-1884), Favretto, Tito, Nono, Simonetti, and others.
[Footnote 2: Died, 1901.]
[Footnote 3: See _Scribner's Magazine_, Neapolitan Art, Dec., 1890,
Feb., 1891.]
Of recent days the impressionistic view of light and color has had its
influence; but the Italian work at its best is below that of France.
Segantini[4] was one of the most promising of the younger men in
subjects that have an archaic air about them. Boldini, though Italian
born and originally following Fortuny's example, is really more
Parisian than anything else. He is an artist of much power and
technical strength in _genre_ subjects and portraits. The newer men
are Fragiocomo, Fattori, Mancini, Marchetti.
[Footnote 4: Died, 1899.]
PRINCIPAL WORKS: MANNERISTS--Agnolo Bronzino, Christ in
Limbo and many portraits in Uffizi and Nat. Gal. Lon.;
Vasari, many pictures in galleries at Arezzo, Bologna,
Berlin, Munich, Louvre, Madrid; Salviati, Charity Christ
Uffizi, Patience Pitti, St. Thomas Louvre, Love and Psyche
Berlin; Federigo Zucchero, Duomo Florence, Ducal Palace
Venice, Allegories Uffizi, Calumny Hampton Court; Baroccio,
Pardon of St. Francis Urbino, Annunciation Loreto, several
pictures in Uffizi, Nat. Gal. Lon., Louvre, Dresden Gal.
ECLECTICS--Ludovico Caracci, Cathedral frescos Bologna,
thirteen pictures Bologna Gal.; Agostino Caracci, frescos
(with Annibale) Farnese Pal. Rome, altar-pieces Bologna
Gal.; Annibale Carracci, frescos (with Agostino) Farnese
Pal. Rome, other pictures Bologna Gal., Uffizi, Naples Mus.,
Dresden, Berlin, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Domenichino, St.
Jerome Vatican, S. Pietro in Vincoli, Diana Borghese,
Bologna, Pitti, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Guido Reni, frescos
Aurora Rospigliosi Pal. Rome, many pictures Bologna,
Borghese Gal., Pitti, Uffizi, Brera, Naples, Louvre, and
other galleries of Europe; Albani, Guercino, Sassoferrato,
and Carlo Dolci, works in almost every European gallery,
especially Bologna; Cristofano Allori, Judith Pitti, also
pictures in Uffizi; Berrettini and Maratta, many examples in
Italian galleries, also Louvre.
NATURALISTS--Caravaggio, Entombment Vatican, many other
works in Pitti, Uffizi, Naples, Louvre, Dresden, St.
Petersburg; Giordano, Judgment of Paris Berlin, many
pictures in Dresden and Italian galleries; Salvator Rosa,
best marine in Pitti, other works Uffizi, Brera, Naples,
Madrid galleries and Colonna, Corsini, Doria, Chigi Palaces
Rome.
LATE VENETIANS--Palma il Giovine, Ducal Palace Venice,
Cassel, Dresden, Munich, Madrid, Naples, Vienna galleries;
Padovanino, Marriage in Cana Kneeling Angel and other works
Venice Acad., Carmina Venice, also galleries of Louvre,
Uffizi, Borghese, Dresden, London; Tiepolo, large fresco
Villa Pisani Stra, Palazzo Labia Scuola Carmina, Venice,
Villa Valmarana, and at Wurtzburg, easel pictures Venice
Acad., Louvre, Berlin, Madrid; Canaletto and Guardi, many
pictures in European galleries.
MODERN ITALIANS[5]--Morelli, Madonna Royal chap.
Castiglione, Assumption Royal chap. Naples; Michetti, The
Vow Nat. Gal. Rome; De Nittis, Place du Carrousel Luxembourg
Paris; Boldini, Gossips Met. Mus. New York.
[Footnote 5: Only works in public places are given. Those in private
hands change too often for record here. For detailed list of works see
Champlin and Perkins, _Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings._]